Post date: Feb 21, 2012 6:48:46 PM
PARIS, FRANCE (SEPTEMBER 29, 2012) (REUTERS) - Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was questioned by police on Tuesday (February 21) over his dealings with an alleged prostitution ring that was run from the northern French city of Lille and organised sex parties in Paris, Brussels and Washington.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn believed he was taking part in swingers parties and had no reason to suspect that the women present were prostitutes says his lawyer in a video dating back to December last year.
The ring allegedly supplied clients of Lille's luxury Carlton hotel.
Last December, former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn's lawyer Henri Leclerc said he believed his client was taking part in swingers parties and had no reason to suspect that the women present were prostitutes.
"He could have perfectly been unaware. Let me tell you that people are not always clothed at these parties. I challenge you to tell the difference between a nude prostitute and a classy lady in the nude," Leclerc said at the time.
This interview given to a French radio generated new interest on Tuesday (February 21) as Strauss-Kahn was being interrogated by police.
Several people have already been arrested, including Carlton managers, businessmen and a local police commissioner as part of an official inquiry into the network.
French construction firm Eiffage FOUG.PA also dismissed an executive whom investigators suspect of using company funds to supply prostitutes to associates and to pay for the women to travel to Paris and Washington to take part in sex parties with Strauss-Kahn.
Using prostitutes is not illegal in France, but Strauss-Kahn risks being charged if investigators decide he knowingly had sex
with prostitutes paid for out of company funds.
Strauss-Kahn, a former socialist finance minister, was forced to resign his IMF post and bow out of French public life after he was arrested and held on bail in New York, accused of trying to rape a Guinean hotel maid.
New York prosecutors later dropped criminal charges against him.